We got the bones down of 5 tracks, guitar and vocals. The X-Y guitar channel ended up sounding amazing. Once I bumped up the channel pointed at the neck, clarity came through. I ran the direct line through the Presonus Tube Preamp and the direct line sounded great as well.

Ended up running the mic through the Pre as well when it came time to record vocals. I got the Cad 3000 mic the other day and had yet to use it. It running through the preamp and sending part of the signal through the sonic maximizer sounded super on the vocals.

I think Geoff left pleasd, but we have a little more work to do. Maybe meeting up a second time next week.

Did some more testing this morning with my two small diaphram condensors and the X-Y technique. I sat on a swivel bar stool and could find the sweet spot by rotating a little left or right. Test recordings sounded better.

Broke out my Presonus Tube Pre and ran the direct line out of that to the board and got my Sonic Maximizer in the Aux1 spot. Using that to run the instrument line out through. Got some good results testing it out this morning.

I did some testing with my acoustic tonight, not sure the X-Y technique sounds as great as I had hoped it would. I may resort to using a large consensor for recording instead. Tomorrow is the day I am having Geoff Breedwell over to help him record a demo. I set up some template tracks that will hopefully speed things up. Not sure yet the scope of what we will do for sure. I wished I had asked a couple more questions. Next time…

Hopefully I gain some more experience and he gets a good demo out of the deal.

So on a whim decided to look for a “client” to practice my recording techniques on. Posted an ad on craigslist for a free recording session and got a response from someone who looks hopeful. Going to try to knock out a 4 song EP. It is a win/win. He gets a (hopefully) great demo CD and I get some practice recording, mixing and mastering. This will be different than when working in my own project where I know what I want it to sound like. I want to focus in on giving the client the sound he wants for his demo.

I really thought this was going to disappoint, but it is a really cool instrument that only feels like a Guitar Hero contoller. I got mine from ThinkGeek.com, they seemed to have the best price around so I pulled the trigger.

I plugged this into Sonar, set it up as a midi device, loaded a couple soft synths and I was on my way. Thing is you have to play cleanly, if you are sloppy it will be sloppy. I don’t fault the controller for that. When I was playing right, I had no tracking issues.

You might have to change your attack a little. With a midi controller like this there are no pull offs. But there are some options that make this less of an issue. The “tap” button can help.

Miserable experience trying to get these two to play nice together. I read many comments online about folks who were able to get this working. I tried all steps and although I did get the fader to work and the knob, all transport functions were dead. It was too much of a hassle and I sent the thing back. Out 9 dollars shipping and a 10% restocking fee.

Started working in drums with Greg tonight, no idea where this is going but just going to piece the parts as they come. Challenges with the midi and sonar and Alesis control pad. Seems like it is hard to get a decent flam or bouncing stick sound. Trying different sensitivity settings, thresholds, etc. Still not happy, but I was able to mess with the midi manually and get some timing issues worked out by quantizing some measures and leaving the measures with the rolls untouched. Gave it some natural feel in places.

I was having issues getting multiple tracks to record simultaneously. Sonar was only recognizing a single stereo track. I read the manual, installed the drivers off the disk (ooops!) and could not get it to work. I called Mackie tech support. Wow! The guy I got was super awesome. He stayed with me through reboots and downloads, got me up and running and then helped me make sure that Sonar saw everything correctly. It was a rare event these days where you get someone who really wants to help. It was great!